The Slowest Timescales of Neural Synchronization Reveal the Strongest Influence of Auditory Distraction.

ABSTRACT: Among all the sounds occurring at any given time, people are often interested in listening to just one. Some competing sounds are merely background noise, whereas others distract attention from target sounds and are less easily suppressed. During active listening, the central auditory pathway unmixes target and distractor sounds based on temporal differences that vary across three orders of magnitude - from millisecond differences in acoustic temporal fine structure to slower perceptual grouping factors that stretch out to multiple seconds. Here, we developed an approach to directly measure central auditory encoding of multiplexed target and distractor sound features in human listeners to determine which timescales are most impacted by the presence of distracting sounds. Target sounds cont

SUBMITTER: Sorensen DO 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12247756 | biostudies-literature | 2025 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature